Breadcrumbs

Harold Parker Planning Unit

Resource Management Plan

Less than an hour’s drive north of Boston, the Harold Parker Planning Unit includes the 3,295-acre Harold Parker and 1,045-acre Boxford State Forests. The forests contain 13 ponds, 105 certified vernal pools, 7 state-listed rare species, and several Native American and colonial archaeological sites.

Harold Parker State Forest offers 93 campsites tucked into the forest near Frye Pond. Fishing, canoeing, and non-motorized boating are also popular activities at Field and Stearns Ponds. Visitors use approximately 59 miles of trails and unpaved forest roads for walking, hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding in the summer, and cross-country skiing and snowshoeing in the winter. Interpretive programs offer the opportunity to learn about the rich cultural and natural history of the forest and the surrounding area. The day use area at Berry Pond, which contains picnic and swimming facilities, closed in 2009 due to the lack of DCR staff. Boxford State Forest provides hiking, mountain biking, bird watching, cross-country skiing and snowshoeing facilities.

Resource Management Plans (RMPs) are working documents that consider the past, present and future of a property. They draw on available existing information to provide an inventory and assessment of existing conditions and activities, enabling the DCR to establish guidelines for future management. Results of this planning process include guidance for short and long-term management of properties, and identification of priorities for capital and operating budgets.

Public input is an important component of the process. It enhances communication and cooperation among the DCR, park visitors, stakeholders, partners and the surrounding communities.

Three public meetings were convened as part of the RMP planning process. The first was held on April 18, 2012, a second on June 13, 2012 and the third on December 5, 2012; 30-day public comment periods followed each meeting. Public input received at these meetings and during the associated comment periods helped shape the Harold Parker Resource Management Plan, which was adopted by the DCR Stewardship Council on March 1, 2013.

Tool Name: Baynote, Inc. Recommendations

The information below summarizes privacy policy terms related to content recommendations on Mass.Gov and is excerpted from the full Mass.gov privacy policy.

Purpose: Displays relevant content recommendation based on the site usage pattern of all users of Mass.Gov. If Personalization is enabled (the default setting), your personal site usage pattern today and on prior visits to Mass.gov will be displayed to you and will also be a factor in determining personalized relevant recommendations for you.

Data Collected: A random anonymous unique identifier is assigned and tracked for each user of the website. This identifier is sent to our vendor, Baynote, when you view a page, open a document or click a link on Mass.Gov. Our vendor then analyzes the specific content that was viewed and provides content recommendations to similar content that you may find useful. A full description of what data Baynote collects and how it uses this data is available at http://www.baynote.com/baynote-services-privacy-policy/. Please note that the tool uses persistent cookies. These cookies will be Mass.gov domain cookies and not Baynote domain cookies. The cookies will store information related to a user’s Mass.gov Web site usage, including the URL and title of sites recently visited and the random anonymous unique identifier assigned to the user. In general, and as described in more detail in Baynote’s service privacy policy linked to above, Baynote only uses the personalized information it gathers to provide recommendation services and display past usage for Mass.Gov users and will not share this information with any third parties, including advertisers. The information collected will not affect content you may see on sites unaffiliated with Mass.Gov.

Express Opt Out: If personalization of recommendations based on the content you view is not desired, or you do not wish to display a list of recently viewed Mass.gov pages, you may turn personalization off. You can do this by using either the switch located below in this privacy policy or an identical switch located directly above the content recommendations and recently viewed content boxes displayed on the Mass.gov site. Once you turn off personalization, your content recommendations will be based on the overall traffic patterns of all users of Mass.Gov and they will not specifically take into account your own personal usage patterns. If you turn off personalization, information collected by this Tool that is associated with your content usage will be deleted from your cookies, and no further information about your content usage will be sent to our vendor.

Disabling personalization will affect both content recommendations and recently viewed page links. If you turn off personalization, this “off” setting will persist as you browse Mass.Gov and during any future sessions. The opt-out setting is stored in a persistent cookie on your computer. The setting will remain in effect so long as you use the same computer with the same Internet browser. If you delete the cookie that contains the opt-out setting or use a different browser or computer, personalization will be enabled and you will need to disable it again on your next visit, if desired.

For our full privacy policy, please close this window and see the Site Policies or Privacy Policy link in the footer of the page.